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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Read What Hollywood Execs Call Their Black Clients When They Think No One Is Watching!

Cynthia McKinney

The "N" Word from the Champs Elysée to Avenue of the Americas

13 June 2012

The latest Hollywood
brouhaha over Gwyneth Paltrow’s decision to tweet the caption “ni**as in
Paris for real” to accompany a picture of her with friends Jay-Z and
Beyoncé while in Paris doesn’t compare to the new evidence of "fraud
upon the Court" that has emerged in a largely unnoticed civil rights
case that very well should be reopened after being unfairlydismissed
six years ago. How about Hollywood executives regularly referring to
their own clients, and Blacks in general, as "niggers," "niggas,"
"coons," "spooks," and "monkeys" while they intentionally discriminated
against Black concert promoters, putting them out of business? It is
the contention of Leonard Rowe, perhaps the best-known and most
successful of all Black concert promoters, that the regular use of these
words by powerful Hollywood executives is a telling indicator of
Hollywood's pervasively racist attitudes toward Blacks, an attitude that
produced illegal trust-like business practices that essentially made
Black concert promoters extinct.

How could these particular Hollywood executives do that?

According
to music industry veterans, once a Black entertainer "crossed over" to a White audience,
Black concert promoters were almost never allowed to promote that
entertainer again. Moreover, according to Rowe, not once was a Black
concert promoter allowed to promote a White entertainer. According to
Rowe, this collusion to fix profits effectively denied the Black
community the spin-off economy associated with concerts and concert
promotions, and the multiplier effect of dollars turning over in the
Black community. Someone presented evidence to me that was just
presented to District Judge Robert P. Patterson and Chief Judge Loretta
A. Preska of the Southern District of New York: a summary of the
racially-charged words that were regularly used by these particular
Hollywood executives: "nigger," "spade," "colored," "monkey," "nigga,"
"uncle tom," "spook," and "coon." It makes for depressing reading:
page after page after page after page, the evidence provided to me shows
the last name of the particular executive and the number of times that
person used one of the above words in e-mail traffic. It is 18 pages,
with two pages mysteriously missing, of heartbreak where specifically
the word "nigger" is used hundreds of times. Even more to the point of
"fraud upon the Court," decisions were made in Rowe's previous case
without even a mention of the e-mail evidence. In fact, Rowe was never
given the e-mails that produced the 18-page summary sheet although he
paid for them. Rowe's case was dismissed by the Court at Summary Judgment.

To
think that this is the way these Hollywood executives view their
African-American clients is not only appalling, but represents more than
a virtual throwback to the ignominious days of a Southern Plantation.
According to Marcus Washington who worked at William Morris, that
company client list has included Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, Lauryn
Hill, Rihanna, Outkast, Trya Banks, Serena Williams, LeBron James,
Whitney Houston, Maxwell, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Spike Lee, Janet
Jackson, Tyler Perry, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Usher, Halle Berry,Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, and Denzel Washington to name a few.

And who exactly are these particular Hollywood executives? Rowe's
lawsuit is against The William Morris Agency (now known as William
Morris Endeavor) and Creative Artists Agency, the biggest and the
baddest of the bunch. (And adding political muscle to this tawdry
script, William Morris Endeavor is currently headed by Ari Emanuel,
brother to the former Chief of Staff of President Obama and now Mayor
of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel.) For many aspiring Black entertainers,
signing with these agencies represents a dream come true. Too bad that
this new evidence brought forward in the Leonard Rowe case shows how
these agencies truly feel about African Americans when they think no one
is watching.

Sadly, Leonard Rowe is not the only witness to Hollywood’s
institutional racism. Marcus Washington, with whom I have spoken, has
his own sordid tale of life while employed at Hollywood’s titan--The
William Morris Agency. In published reports on the internet, Marcus,
acting as his own lawyer, filed a $25 million lawsuit alleging racial
discrimination in December 2010. Among the many details in his 80-page
complaint, Washington said that upon his entry into William Morris’ New
York office in September of 2008, there were zero Black, zero Latino,
and only one Asian-American Agent employed out of an executive staff of
50. Washington wrote that he was the only Black hired into the Agent
Trainee program and while he had recently graduated from the University
of Miami with his Masters in Music Business and Entertainment Industries
and helped co-manage the career of J Records singer/songwriter and now
eight-time GRAMMY® nominated artist Jazmine Sullivan, all of his White
counterparts advanced above him having considerably fewer academic
achievements and less professional work experience.

According to Washington, William Morris immediately sought to have Washington's case compelled into arbitration because of an
arbitration agreement Washington signed as a condition of employment.
Washington argued that the provision which stated that “any issue”
including ones of “discrimination” and “retaliation” were to be
arbitrated was “unconscionable, tainted with illegality and malum in se” given
the historical evidence presented to the Court showing the company’s
113-year history of systemic disparate treatment towards Blacks. In
July 2011, Washington's judge ruled in favor of William Morris. In
September 2011, Washington appealed to the Second Circuit that his
lawsuit against William Morris was erroneously compelled into
arbitration, and over the last nine months, Washington has attempted
three times to have this decision reversed so that hiscase can be impartiallydecided
in a public forum by a jury that reflects the diversity of New York
City. Each time, the Court has denied his appeal without providing a
judicial opinion. Sadly, this industry has been successful at keeping
this type of racial discrimination away from the eyes of a jury. But
now, after acquiring thenew evidence discovered in the Rowe case,Washington filed a motion in the Court to introduce evidence that various attorneys at Loeb & LoebLLP--the law firm representing William Morris in both the Rowe and Washington cases--as well as judges, have been involved in a corrupt conspiracy to collude and commit “fraud upon the Court.”

Because of what Rowe felt were unreliable
lawyers colluding and conspiring with his opponents' lawyers, Rowe has
joined Washingtonas a pro se
litigant in the Southern District of New York. They both have refiled
their cases and they are awaiting decisions from the Court. This
time around, the Southern District Court of New York has the opportunity
to do the right thing. Both
Rowe and Washington are involved in litigation that could produce
landmark Civil Rights decisions. Both of them are willing to share the
evidence unearthed in the Rowe case that could deal a devastating blow
to "business as usual" in the entertainment industry.

Leonard Rowe and Marcus Washington are
available, together or individually, for interviews to explain their
firsthand experiences withHollywood, racism, or corruption in the U.S. justice system.

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